CO129-588-23 China- British extra-territorial rights- negotiations with China 28-3-1942 - 27-11-1942 — Page 58

53821/42.

Colonial office,

Downing Street,

8.W.1.

21 November, 1942.

58

Dear 'Ashley Clarke,

It was suggested at the meeting on the 18th of November, about the draft Treaty with China, that I should let you have, for purposes of record, á note on the special point which arises regarding Kenya.

The ownership of land in the Highlands area of Kenya ia reserved to Europeans under a policy which dates from the earliest settlement at the beginning of this century, and which has been accepted by successive British Governments.

There is, for those

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who wish to pursue the subject, an account of this question on pages 15 te, 17 of the memorandum "Indians în Kenya" presented to Parliament in 1933, (Cmd. 1922). There is a large Indian population in the Colony, and the European settlers' have always been apprehensive that the mâmission of Indians to land owning in the Highlands“ krón' võild. destroy the sosial and economic basis on which it is hoped to build up an East African territory under Bronson leadership, as has been done for example in Southern Rhodesia.

© Kenya lies, of course, within the "Congo Basin", and any formal discrimination against hon- Europeans in the acquisition of land would conflict with article 3 of the Convention of St. Germain (Treaty series, 1919, No.18) and would conceivably have been challenged by Japan, which was a party to that Convention. But the reservation of land to Europeans is not expressly preswribed in any Kenya Ordinance;

H. ASHLEY CLARKE, ESQ.

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